Peripheral devices are electronic devices that are accessible to and/or controllable by, but are not an essential component of, one or more host electronic devices. Peripheral devices are frequently, but not necessarily, external to such host devices. Common examples of peripherals include printers, scanners, mice, keyboards, external hard drives, sensors, cameras, speakers, or the like.
The number and complexity of peripheral devices being used, especially in enterprise environments, is constantly increasing, with many modern peripheral devices incorporating sophisticated processing capabilities to facilitate access, maintenance, diagnostics, control, or the like. For example, complex devices such as vehicles, payment processing systems, home/office automation systems, or entire cloud computing systems may be considered peripheral devices. Current options for managing these complex collections of peripheral devices are limited.